


why can't I hold you on the dance floor?

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Nobility, Canonical Character Death, Debut, F/M, Found Families, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Music, Nobility, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt, background galen/lyra, background spiritassassin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 09:51:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11666721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Lady Jyn Erso is about to come into her majority, and that means fulfilling the last duty that had been left to her by her deceased parents.But if she doesn't want to dance, her adoptive fathers are perfectly fine with letting her run far far away.(They'd rather she'd stay, and she wants to find the one who has her heart.)





	why can't I hold you on the dance floor?

**Author's Note:**

> Musical inspiration comes from Sir Anthony Hopkins (yes, THAT ONE), and his [And the Waltz Goes On](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M57Fi19vcSI).

Whispers and footsteps passing behind her and around her, and while she can’t hear the exact words being said, she knows what they’re trying to talk about without necessarily talking out loud.

A man in the red-embroidered jacket of the household on an ordinary day murmurs next to her, and she shakes her head to decline another serving of bread and fruit. 

Tea, then, from one of the silver services, worn from the years of use and the hands of the men and women in this place. What a profusion of fingerprints it would be now, she thinks, as she turns the large teapot around -- the faded gilt of the incised flowers and vines vanishes from her view, now, and she only has eyes for the rich red-brown of the tea itself as she pours into her bone-white cup. The fingerprints of the inmates of this house: the ancestors of her father and of her mother. The fingerprints of her guardians, named to their offices at her parents’ sudden death.

Her own fingerprints, joining those marks that linger on the warm metal, until it’s once again cleaned and polished to a high shine.

A half-full cup and the lingering crumbs of the brown sugar cubes, still a dozen or so remaining in their bulb-shaped dish on the table. She adds milk and a spoonful of the orange marmalade -- the last lingering memory of her mother, she thinks, the last possible memorial this house could cherish for Lyra -- orange marmalade made from the orchards surrounding this very same house, the orchards that had been Lyra’s especial care nearly from the time she could take up the hoe and the rake and the trowel and the basket.

Jyn turns the silver spoon over, morosely. Of the pieces of cutlery and tableware in this house, this is the only one that’s remained to her from her first meals. All the other forks and knives and spoons are gone now, lost now, replaced by more ordinary objects, although those are also carefully decorated with the family arms.

Arms that are duplicated on the covers of the large red-bound book sitting next to her place at the table: seven five-pointed stars arranged in a V-shape on a shield, and within the V-shape the silhouette of a bird with its wings outstretched in flight. On the bird’s head is one more star, this one with four points instead of five; and at the base of the bird and its wings a single vine with seven leaves sprouting.

The arms of the Erso family, granted to its members by Grand Princess Leia of the House of Organa. 

And Jyn traces the arms once again.

Wonders who will bear it, after the natural course of her life has passed.

The thing is, several of the noble houses of the realm are already in the possession of men and women who have no intentions of marrying: there’s Sabine of the Wrens. The seven Hapes sisters. The Grand Princess’s own brother, final scion of the ancient Skywalker family. Satine of the Kryzes. They have heirs, and they are none of them planning to marry -- indeed they don’t need to, now that their successions are already secure.

And then there’s her.

One last duty from her parents, and she’s staring it in the face, and she’s determined that she won’t flinch away.

Not even if it kills her, she thinks.

She stabs the spoon into the remains of the little jar of marmalade, and chews on the soft sugar of the pale-orange rind, and sighs.

Why her parents had seen fit to ask her to choose a spouse, she can only attribute to the fortuitous nature of their own match: the happy accident that led Lyra to wed a wandering academic with naught to his name but a double handful of milky-gray crystals -- kyber crystals, the heart and soul now of the defenses of the kingdoms clustered beneath one single ruler, placed in the great machines of planetary protection.

She knows the story of that first meeting by heart: how Lyra had been wandering the boundaries of the Erso lands, searching for new fruit and flowers to take home to her garden, and had been fortunate enough to ride to the rescue of a man named Galen. His only problem had been the great felines attacking from the forest-covered mountains. Lyra had driven the felines off without harming any of them; Galen had only had to look up to fall in love with the woman in soil-crusted gloves and a perfectly ordinary and moth-eaten hat.

That story is part of her heart, and she knows which parts are true and which ones aren’t, and her parents had only ever wanted her to have every chance at happiness that she can get -- even this, this frivolity of a ball, to be held the night before she reaches the age of majority.

And of course every thrice-damned gossip in all the kingdoms had understood the ball to be nothing more than a tarted-up marriage market!

She’d throw the cup if she could, but she’s attached to the delicate blue of the flowers painted into its base, so she just clenches her hands into fists in her lap, and contemplates the pile of envelopes at one end of the table.

Invitations, engraved and hand-addressed, to the men and women of the great houses.

And not one of those would be going out to -- her friend. Her ally.

What to call Cassian, she thinks.

Cassian who didn’t even have a family name of his own: and she knows everything about his past, because he’s shared the bare handful of facts that he knows with her. Son of a soldier and her husband. Brothers dead in infancy. He’d taken up his mother’s trade, and had eventually been recognized as officer material. What decorations he wore, he’d received from the hands of the Grand Princess herself. He was particularly known for his daring exploits into the lands ruled by the men and women who called themselves Moffs, nearly always returning with valuable military intelligence for Leia and her advisers to act upon.

But Jyn only remembers the little boy who’d wandered into her mother’s garden, and who’d looked and sounded hungry (she’d heard his stomach growling) -- and only asked for a flower to lay on his mother’s grave.

Remembers the boy coming back at long and irregular intervals. Remembers his stories of learning how to fight and learning how to blend into all manner of places. Remembers his shy smiles and his rough hands.

Steps, coming closer, and she looks up from her reverie, in the here and now.

Steps, and the hard tap-tap of a gnarled staff on the stone floors. 

Jyn looks up into the scarred and unseeing face of one of her guardians, and smiles.

“I’ve come to make my usual apologies,” Chirrut announces.

And in this airy room with the late-morning sunlight warming her legs and feet, she snorts. “And I’m going to tell you to stop it. Again.” She pours a cup for him, as he calmly takes the seat to her left. “I mean, there are only so many times you can say it.”

“Because I know, and Baze knows, that this whole thing is -- a charade,” he murmurs after the first sip. “One we’d spare you from if we could.”

“I know what my parents wanted, and I know how things have gotten out of hand,” Jyn says, waving a hand at the envelopes. “I’d send them all messages saying _Fuck off_ if I could.”

“They would all take it as a jest. With claws.”

“Which is all it is. But -- everyone wants to see a ball, now. Everyone wants to take the -- the search for an engagement -- seriously.”

“A ball to which everyone will be invited,” Chirrut says. “At the end of which you’ll ask someone to marry you.”

If she chooses to ignore the second statement, he doesn’t seem slighted. “Everyone is invited -- except for my friend.”

She wants to look away when a shadow crosses her guardian’s face -- but instead she takes the hand that he holds out to her. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.”

“You don’t sound ungrateful to me,” Chirrut says gently.

“I just mean -- you’re just trying to fulfill Lyra and Galen’s last wishes,” Jyn says. “It’s not your fault things got blown out of proportion.”

“We’d still spirit you out if we could. Or open the doors and windows and look the other way. Metaphorically speaking, of course, in my case.”

“And don’t you think Baze has already made plans for that?”

She grins, and waits for Chirrut to do the same.

“It wouldn’t be him otherwise,” he chuckles.

“All I want is your blessing,” Jyn murmurs after the laughter has faded away.

“You know that you have it,” is the immediate reply. “Now and always. No matter what you want to do.”

“I promise I’ll come back,” Jyn says. “This is my home and yours. This is the home my parents made. This is home. Our home.”

“A home I’m more than grateful to have. Baze and I, we were never expecting to have a home of any kind. Neither a home nor a -- a child. Forgive me for saying he and I have equal claim to you. That honor belongs first and foremost to your parents, and always has. But in my flighty moments I like to think that perhaps you are our daughter as well.”

She leaps to her feet, then, and falls to her knees beside his chair. 

When she was a child she had leaned against her father’s desk, listening to him read his books out loud; she’d sat next to her mother, grubbing in the black-and-gray soil of their gardens.

For the year after their death she’d taken to her bed -- and it was Baze and Chirrut who had sat with her, day after slow-passing day, and night after painful night.

Now she leans into Chirrut, and sits up straight when she feels his hand on the crown of her head.

“Jyn,” she hears him say.

A shadow falls over her, and she looks up: silent and sure as always, Baze has entered the room and stopped on her other side. 

She smiles at him, as well.

“Starling,” Baze mutters, and the grave pitch of his voice warms her through to the quick. 

His hand is a little unsteady, now, with the advancing years.

But she leans into the touch of his fingertips to her cheek.

“Will you at least let us know when you’ll be leaving?” Chirrut asks. “That is, if you do decide to leave.”

“Who else would I tell,” Jyn says.

*

She dreams of a thousand deaths.

Her mother, pierced through the heart, dead before she fell.

Her father, heedless of the rain that fell on his tear-streaked cheeks.

The two of them, staring into the heart of a star that was also an inferno, before joining hands and leaping in.

Over and over she finds herself dying with them, united with them for the last fleeing moment of life.

And she wakes up, her throat clogged with silent sobs.

Two pitchers on the nightstand, waiting for when she throws the sheets and the covers back: water in one, and a cool herbal infusion in the other.

She gulps the contents of one and then the other.

Stares out the window at the cloud-roiled night.

No moons or stars for her, not in these hours with the heavy smell of incoming rain. Not when in an hour and a day she’ll need to be laced into the fine scarlet dress waiting in the next room. Not when she’ll need to hold her head up and present herself to the hopefuls who want to win her hand.

So she has to do this.

And if she had still wanted to run, this would have been the right time for it, the only time for it. 

But she’s made up her mind.

Here she will stay.

She stalks to the window and peers into the night-shrouded expanse of her mother’s favorite garden.

In the corner where Lyra had last set her gloves aside, the corner that still has an unopened packet of seeds inside a small pot, there is a vine that clings gracefully to the weathered walls.

She can’t see the flowers on that vine, not now: but they are blooming, tonight, completely unexpectedly.

She takes a deep breath of a fragrance like smoke and sugar and ten-year-old wine, and thinks of the image of her mother wearing night-blooming flowers in her hair, small pale blue buds, on the day she was wed.

And she cries, though she has no tears to shed, though her throat feels wound with thorns and thirst. The long hours of lying silent and awake and lonely. The heavy unyielding humidity of the looming night. The fear that crawls along her nerves.

Her hands in fists until her bones hurt, until she feels she must be bleeding.

“Why aren’t you here?”

*

“I’ll do it,” she says.

“Leave me,” she says.

Pale cream material: her underdress, lace and ribbons gleaming softly against her skin.

Her hair is already braided and swept back, with all the pins blending into the dark strands.

The gown on its stand: red skirts embroidered in silver, in intertwining lines meant to evoke the wings of her family’s crest, the feathers that allow the star-crowned bird to soar into the skies.

Feathers, too, on the crown that she’ll be wearing tonight: feathers and leaves, alternating, jewel-crusted.

And to honor Baze and Chirrut both: a fine sword with its fittings in a red to match the dress, the bare blade polished to a high shine.

When it comes to putting the dress on, when it comes to buckling the sword on, she doesn’t have to think: the clasps and the cords and the buckles and the buttons are easy and quick and they leave her with entirely too much time to stare at her overdecorated self -- at her multiple reflections, because the walls of this room are lined with mirrors.

Here is the great fist-sized ornament that she needs to wear for everyone to see, dangling on its ornate silver chain. A rock cut to imitate the jagged facets of a kyber crystal.

And she looks at herself as she drapes that huge and heavy chain around her neck, and the mirrors seem too empty.

There should be other people in here with her.

She stares at herself, alone, and again she feels that scorching rasp in her throat of impending tears. That bottomless woeful thirst.

Music, drifting in with the scents of the gardens.

Laughter. Conversation. Too many catty remarks.

She stares past the mirrors, stares past the reflections of her eyes.

She still has time to take all of these fripperies off.

She still has time to vanish into the dark hours.

She still has time to escape -- 

And there is no more time.

Already she can imagine the dances that will open the night, the feast laid upon the great table, the rooms ablaze with light and the appraising glances of everyone who’s come to the Erso home tonight. 

Already she can see the piles upon piles of flowers from the gardens, a riot of colors on every possible surface; already she can see the thousand crystalline grains on the serving pieces, throwing off scintillating light in every direction.

Her mother and father are not here, on this night, and she will have to stand in their place.

This is her night: this is the ball for her birthday, and at the very peak of the night -- when the moons are all blazing in the sky -- she will come into her majority. She will be the mistress of this house.

She bows her head.

Swears, softly.

It has to be done.

Finishing touches: her crown and her rouge and her shoes. 

“Jyn.”

She turns, and allows herself to hitch out a dry sob: because there is Baze in the doorway, gleaming and polished and -- almost forlorn -- she runs to him, and throws herself into his arms.

“There is no word from him,” he says, and she nods.

“Then I cannot expect him.” A deep breath, and another. “Or them.”

“No. Your parents are here.” Baze’s hand on the top of her head, careful upon her crown and her hair. “And here,” and he gestures to his own heart.

White gloves against the black and red of his formal garb. The gold of his own decorations. The sheen of the black ribbon tying his hair back.

Jyn touches her throat. “They’re not the only ones. You and Chirrut -- you’re here, with me.”

“We were always happy to have you,” he says. “We are happy now. Happy to the point of letting you go.”

“Please don’t.”

That gets her a small smile in response.

Out the door and past her chambers: and now there is only a long sweep of staircase left between her and the guests who have come for this night.

She looks over her shoulder at the last set of windows, their clear panes rising gracefully from floor to ceiling.

A star-filled night. Five moons of six already waxing.

“Last chance,” she whispers, not quite to herself.

The words are not meant for Baze, and so he doesn’t answer.

And there is no response.

So she squares her shoulders and thinks about a carefully-worded rejection.

The music starts, and she heads down the stairs.

“Jyn Erso,” is all the woman in the livery announces.

*

“Come and dance with me.”

She looks up, and nearly falls over with relief. 

A false smile full of sharp teeth, and she places her hand in Kes Dameron’s. Lets him sweep her onto the dance floor. 

“Thank you.”

“Shara told me to come and get you,” he says, and with his guidance she rises easily from the dip-and-twirl. “Says she brought you your favorite candy.”

“Not to turn down candy: but please tell me she has drinks, too.”

He laughs, loudly enough to draw haughty glances. “When has she ever gone without?”

“That’s why we’re friends,” Jyn declares.

And when Kes steps away for a flourish of a bow, Shara is there to cut in. “I lost a bet because of you.”

“You thought I’d be very far away by now,” Jyn says as they thread a sedate series of steps.

“Pretty much.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Jyn says. “On the other hand, I’m feeding you and plying you with good drinks all night long.”

“You’d better!”

*

She bows to Han Solo when he shows up in silver from head to toe. “Leia made you wear that,” she says.

“I was happy to,” is the insouciant reply. “And I’m to keep watch.”

“I should say I don’t need your fussing, but honestly, those people in the red uniforms are starting to make me angry,” and she tosses her head in the general direction of a cluster of men. 

“Moffs?”

“If they’re not, I’ll eat Chirrut’s staff.”

“You don’t have to,” Han says, and claps his hands twice to continue the form that they’re currently dancing. “Just say the word and I’ll back you and your sword all the way.”

“I don’t want them to cause trouble.”

“If they’ve got any brains in their heads, they won’t even get near you.”

*

“Almost time,” Chirrut says, and the curtains in the alcove hush the echoes of his voice. “You’ll still be here after midnight -- they won’t have to be.”

“I’m thinking I’m just going to tell them all to get lost,” Jyn says, between sips of wine.

“Do it politely. Do it in a way they’ll all remember.”

“Then I’ll just brandish my sword,” and she makes herself laugh when he smiles and shakes his head.

And she’s reaching for the hilt at her hip to do just that when the woman in the livery suddenly steps into the alcove. Urgent steps on the floor. “My lady.”

“Trouble,” Jyn says, tensing.

“Not -- not exactly,” the woman says, and then she produces a slip of paper from her sleeve. “I was asked to give this to you.”

“Jyn,” she hears Chirrut warn.

“Read it to me,” Jyn says to the woman.

Who coughs, and says, “ _I’ll be happy with just one flower._ ”

Chirrut takes a deep, startled breath.

“Say that again,” Jyn hears herself say. Hears the tremble in her own words.

“ _I’ll be happy with just one flower._ ”

“Impossible,” she says.

“Go,” Chirrut says.

And she dashes from the alcove. Through the shocked crowd. Poleaxed expressions on Kes and Shara’s faces, and a raised eyebrow from Han.

Baze, catching up to her: “What is it?”

“Not _what_ ,” she says. “ _Who_.”

He turns around quickly. Starts moving forward.

She’s grateful to hurry in his wake.

At the foot of the great staircase is a man in blue and white.

Dust still smudged on his cheek.

The twist of his mouth is as complicated as she’s ever seen it: he looks like he’s torn right down the middle between smiling and grimacing.

He smells of aged wine and smoke and sugar, and there is a single small blue flower in his hand.

A flower from the vine that lives in the corner of the garden.

“If you have a flower,” she blurts out, “then you don’t need me to give you one.”

“I couldn’t think of anything else to give you.” Pause. “Happy birthday, my lady.”

One more step forward, one more and she’ll be able to touch him. To make sure he’s real, and not just a figment of her imagination, or of her longing.

But there is a susurrus behind her -- 

Rustling, and Chirrut’s surefooted steps as he stops on the opposite side from Baze. “Jyn?”

“He’s here,” she says.

And she holds out her trembling hand for Cassian to take.

Through a haze of disbelief she watches him step forward, and trap the small blue flower between his fingers and hers.

He is warm. 

He is smiling, now.

And the music starts and he’s stepping into a series of dancing steps, only a little off the beat -- 

Jyn quickens her steps, catches his eyes, allows herself to smile -- and then he’s hurrying right with her, into the rhythm of her, and soon they’re whirling together, past every other face at the party, past her shock.

Faster and faster they move as the music rises and rises, dipping and twirling and she can’t make herself let go of his hands -- and so she laughs when he pulls her close, when he stops dead and the music crashes right on a bright high, and she is looking at him, at the incredulous joy in his eyes.

“You’re here,” she whispers.

“I’m really here. I’ll -- I’ll step on your toes to prove it.”

She laughs, shocked and pleased and delirious with the presence of him. “Please don’t.”

(He does anyway, and she’s not at all surprised: she only kicks his foot, very very gently, when they pause in another corner and he finally kisses her.)

*

His hand in hers at the stroke of midnight: he doesn’t make up for the missing, but he’s here, and she’s ready and willing and needing to take just that.

Just him.

Already she’s looking forward to breakfast with him, and the steaming pot of tea between his plate and hers, the fresh jar of marmalade.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Thirst" at [@therebelcaptainnetwork](http://therebelcaptainnetwork.tumblr.com).
> 
> Look me up on tumblr at [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com)!


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